


1 nirty-three Million Acres 
and tne University 



An address delivered January 2i, 1913, at Ft. Smitn before 
the Arkansas State liorticultural Society by Acting President 
J. H. Reynolds, or the Univ. ' ?<ty or Arkansas. 



The University should vitalize 
the whole intellectual and moral 
life of the State and should serve 
its every material interest. 



MM 1- 19i,1 






Thirty-three Million Acres and the University 



Address delivered January 21, 1913, at Ft. Smith before the Arkansas State 
Horticultutal Society by Acting President J. H. Reynolds of the University 
of Arkansas. 

Have you eyer seen a rich man otherwise well dressed wear- 
ing a battered hat? What did you think of him? Did you ever 
see a man in comfortable circumstances depending on his neigh- 
bors to educate his children? W^iat did you thinK of him? We 
shall meet both of these men tonight. 

Factors That Have Retarded the Development of Arkansas 

Many factors have operated to retard the development of 
Arkansas. In common with other Southern states, Arkansas was 
set back many years by the ravages of the war. But perhaps the 
state has been injured quite as much by misrepresentation as by 
war. The Arkansas Tra/eler, Slow Train through Arkansas and 
similar stories have been a curse to the material development of 
the state. The unhappy routes selected by the Iron Mountain and 
the Choctaw railroads from Memphis to Little Rock have also cost 
the state a bad name and millions of wealth. Travellers coming 
over these roads are greeted with unsightly swamps, stagnant 
ponds, miasmal fogs, shacks, makeshifts for houses, hoisted high 
on rickety stilts. First impressions linger with us. Moreover, 
Arkansas until recent years has been largely a one-crop state — a cot- 
ton state; and though cotton has been king, we haye found it a costly 
despot. One-crop farming has never developed a people or a coun- 
try; and one-crop cotton farming is the poorest developer of all. 
It does not stimulate enterprise: it requires no special alertness or 
energy to plant, cultivate, gather or market it; it weakens the soil 
and the man; it developes neither. 

Moreover for many years the people of Arkansas themselves 
apparently lacked enterprise. Is it possible that the bad reputa- 
tion of the state caused the m-ore progresssive immigrants to go 
elsewhere? The spirit of get-together-and-do-things was absent. 
The people lived apart. The spirit ot co-operation was not pres- 
ent. Their motto "sv as let good enough alone. Their manufactur- 
ing was confined to lumbering, mining and crude farm utensils. 
These forms of manufacturing are really a consumption rather 
than a production of wealth. The educational facilities were 
equally as poor and crude. I can speak freely without my pa- 
triotism being questioned because I am doubly a native, my father 
himself being a native of Arkansas. 

-3- 



* Arkansas Discovered 

Forces Operating to Discover the State— But the state 
has been discovered in recent years both by itself and by the out- 
side world. There has suddenly SDrung: to life a state conscious- 
ness, a state patriotism, a state pride— elements notable for their 
absence in the past. The people are coming to appreciate them- 
selves and the possibilities of their state. The outside world has 
also discovered Arkansas; a fact which is the resultant of several 
forces. The Secretary of Mines, Manufactures and Agriculture has 
been a power; his correspondence, exhibits and publications, scat- 
tered broadcast like good seed, have taken root in many minds. 

The State Horticultural Society is also among the public forces 
to which Arkansas owes a debt of gratitude. Your published pro- 
ceedings are valuable documents and should be given a wider 
circulation. The University of Arkansas through the College of 
Agriculture, though poorly supported, has been a factor in dis- 
covering and bringing to the attention of the world the marvelous 
resources of the state. The railroads through their advertising 
departments have done no little in this work. Last but not least 
the Farmers' Union has been an important educational agency. 
Moreover, the economic law of necessity, the pressure of population 
upon subsistence, is operating to bring to Arkansas from over- 
populated states at the North, thousands of thrifty people, whose 
hearts are strong with pluck and enterprise. They and their 
strength are becoming a part of our Hfe; they have brought with 
them the air they formerly breathed. Their presence is stimulat- 
ing. We welcome them. 

A Larger Patriotism— The result of the operation of all 
these forces is the discovery of Arkansas. There is growing 
among us a larger patriotism and a healthy state pride. We are 
beginning to see and reach out for the bigger things. We are be- 
coming citizens, neighbors, brothers. Get-together organizations 
are the order of the day. In the fruit industry the State Horti- 
cultural Society and the Ozark Fruit Growers' Association are de- 
veloping a state horticultural consciousness and solidarity; fifteen 
hundred teachers now gather annually at the State Teachers' Asso- 
ciation; other professional and occupational associations are doing 
equally effective work; commercial leagues and farmers' organiza- 
tions are co-operating. We are dreaming dreams, and seeing deep 
m the future visions of larger things; and as we go up the path of 
progress our perspective broadens and our horizon widens. 

Climate and Crops— The outside world has discovered that 
instead of being a miasmal swamp, two-fifths of the state lies 1000 
feet above sea level; that a greater part of the rest of the state 
has good elevation, ranging from 300 to 1000 ft., and that only a small 
area is swampy. It has become noised abroad that we have a mild 
climate, long summers and long growing seasons and short win- 
ters; that the soil is wondrously fertile; that the great swamp belt 
along the Mississippi, yet undrained and including such counties as 
Mississippi, St. Francis and Crittenden, is as rich as the valley of 

—4— 



the JSJile, and that in days to come, when engineers have done thf ir 
work, it will support prosperous millions. 

Between the extremes of altitude from 134 feet on the Miss- 
issippi to 4000 feet in the Ozarks, Arkansas can produce every 
kind of crop. It is fruitful in everything- that flies in the air, 
swims the waters or hides in the soil. Alfalfa grows to perfec- 
tion; all sections produce a good yield of corn; in parts of the state 
a go:'d yield of wheat is reahzed; in all parts except the north- 
west cotton is a paying crop; Eastern Arkansas produces from 50 
to 100 bushels of rice per acre; in the south grows cane from which 
the best grade of sugar and molasses are made; in the northwest 
fruit grows to perfection in color, size and flavor; truck farming 
is profitable everywhere. Arkansas has all minerals from coal to 
diamonds except gold. 

Indeed Arkansas is a state of marvelous resources. Her de- 
velopment within the last ten years has been remarkable. The as- 
sessed value of her property in 1895 was $180,568,946; in 1900 
$201,908,783; in 1905, $299,730,877; in 1910, $374,845,239; in 1912, 
$425,000,000. The increase in land values has been equally as 
rapid. There was an increase from 1900 to 1910 of $218,000,000 or 
120.5 percent. The increase in acreage land value was from $6.32 
to $14.13, The value of farm products increased in the same de- 
cade from $79,000,000 to $143,000,000 or 81 percent. The value of 
farm products in 1879 was $43,796,261. Of the 33,616,000 acres in 
Arkansas, 17,416,075 or over 51 percent are in farms. Of this 
amount about half is improved and the other half woodland. Farms 
constituted 7.7 percent of the area of the state in 1850, now 51.8 
percent. The total value of farm property of the state in 1890 was 
$155,019,702; in 1900, $181,416,001; in 1910, $400,089,303, a leap of 
over 115 percent in the last decade— the first decade of our awak- 
ening to the Twentieth Century. 

A State of Small Farms— For the most part the owner of 
the farm cultivates it. It is a state of comparati v^ely small farms, 
and the size of the farm is getting smaller with succeeding years. 
The average number of acres per farm in 1860 in Arkansas was 
245.4; in 1890, 110.4; in 1900, 93.1; in 1910, 81,1. The farmers of 
Arkansas are predominately native whites, only 1.1 percent of 
them being foreign born, but 29.6 percent are colored. Arkansas 
is distinctively an agricultural state; 87.1 percent of her people 
live in rural communities; 12.9 percent m cities above 2500 inhabi- 
tants. In contrast with this 46.3 percent of the people of the con- 
tinental United States live in cities or urban districts. 

Arkansas has 11,000,000 peach trees or about one-tenth of the 
peach trees of the United States, and one- twentieth of all the 
apple trees in the United States. Stories of how men have made 
fortunes here in fruit growing read like a romance. In 15 years, 
E. N. Blank and his wife, both of St. Louis, have made $100,000 
near Decatur in Benton County raising fruit. The peach orchard 
of our distinguished president, Mr. Bert Johnson, is known all over 
the United States. What apples excel the Arkansas Black, the 



Grimes Golden, the Jonathan, the Mammoth Black Twig? Where 
is the peer of the Elberta among peaches? Of the Bartlett and 
Kiefer among pears? 

Last year, Arkansas produced 970,000 bales of cotton, ranking 
seventh state in the Union; in 1910, 69,216,000 bushels of corn, 
ranking twelfth; 2,700,000 bushels of wheat or twenty-eighth in 
the Union. In rice, it ranked third, with a record of 2,400,000 
bushels, and its production of oats was 4,730,000 bushels. In con- 
trast with the value of i^rkansas farm products in 1910, 
$400,089,303; Missouri farm products and live stock for 1912 are 
valued at $750,00,000, about $200,000,000 being from ordinary field 
crops; in Kansas the same year the value of farm products and 
live stock was $580,155,476, of which the field crops furnished 
about $227,834,650. 

The quality of Arkansas coal is sufficiently attested by the fact 
of its adoption for use in the American Navy. Even more sig- 
nificant is the fact that, of the state's vast coal supply (188,000,- 
000 short tons), only 2 percent has been mined. The coal business 
in the state is growing by leaps and bounds, and within the last 
few years, Arkansas, with the exception of Michigan, has had the 
greatest increase in the percentage of coal production of any state 
in the Union. Moreover living conditions on the farm are slowly 
improving. Good houses and barns are making their way from 
the towns out into the country; buggies have supplanted the wagon 
as a method of travel; improved farm machinery is finding its way 
out into the remotest sections. 

Arkansas Facing* Changed Conditions 

The picture here painted is an attractive one and is calculated 
to stimulate our pride; but lest we boast, we should remember 
that pride too often leads to self-complacency. "Pride goeth be- 
fore destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall, " Too much 
pride often blinds us to fatal defects. An apple may be red and 
beautiful yet tunneled through at the core by a gnawing worm. 

Arkansas is facing fundamentally changed conditions. Pio- 
neer days and pioneer methods are gone and with them has passed 
away our virgin soil. How many thousand acres of abandoned 
farms in Arkansas?— of red and barren hills once verdant with 
growing crops? Note how we are trying to replace the lost fer- 
tility of the soil by increasing our commercial fertilizer bills. 
Worst of all, while our soil remains depleted, our population rapid- 
ly increases. In an appallingly short time Arkansas will be called 
upon to feed and clothe several millions of people. I ask of you — 
How is this possible? There is one answer— one only. By making 
four and five blades grow where one grew before. Northwest Ar- 
kansas now receives yearly about $3,000,000 from her fruit. By ac- 
tual demonstration it is shown that with the practice of scientific 
methods, this figure could be multiplied by ten. It has been esti- 
mated that if all the farmers of Arkansas had last year followed 
in cultivating their crops the instructions of the men in charge of 

--6— 



the farm demonstration work the state yield would have been in- 
creased $67, 369, 128. 

A few years ago when our fathers and mothers mated and 
looked out on life, they faced conditions wholly different from 
those which our sons and daughters now face. Then there was free 
virgin soil awaiting them. It required neither skill nor special ed- 
ucation to clear the land, cultivate the crops and gather abundant 
harvests. Though conditions were primitive, the solution of thie 
meat and bread problem was easy. But now all the better class 
lands are under cultivation,— the soil has lost its primitive fertility, 
and the price is high. It is also costly to provide buildings, stock 
and farm utensils. Moreover, the young people proposing to farm 
will have to face the competion of farmers who have either been 
trained in our agricultural schools, or are receiving the benefit of 
the agricultural extension work of the agricultural college. Hence 
the young farmer today faces conditions which require of him ed- 
ucation, training, skill and capital. The same thing is ^rue for our 
young people who enter law, m.edicine, teaching, engineering, or 
business. Their competitors are the men and women turned out 
by our best law schools, medical colleges, normals, engineering 
schools, and departments of commerce of our universities. A small 
engine with simple equipment may meet the demands of a factory 
in the days of small things; but with growth there comes the need 
of more power, larger buildings, skilled workmen, expert manage- 
ment and large capital, and the factory will fail unless these needs 
are supplied. The poor educational facilities of Arkansas served 
reasonably well the simple economic conditions of the past, but 
they do not meet the demands of the present. 

Arkansas' Great Need— A University 

Here, then, is the problem. What is our chief need if we are 
effectively to provide for the further development of the state? 
if "we guarantee to it for all future time sufficient food supply? 
Certainly the state can no longer afford to be beguiled with the 
siren strains of the old song telling of our untold natural resources. 
Arkansas can no longer depend upon an unlimited quantity of un- 
touched wealth; she knows that is a myth. She must rely upon the 
skill and training of her people for the development of her resour- 
ces. The times call imperatively for educated leadership and the 
dicipline of exact training. Our chief need is, therefore, for keen 
thinkers, for minds thoroughly disciplmed, for brain power trained 
to its highest capacity. In a word we naed strong leadership — 
that kind of leadership which is in this century impossible without 
trained powers of thought. 

But how are we to get such men and women? Either by de- 
pending upon other states to educate them for us, or by providing 
adequate educational facilities at home. What is Arkansas doing 
in this respect? In the field of elementary education, the state is 
thoroughly aroused, having in the last four years increased the 
average school term to 117 days, the school revenue from about 



three and a half millions to over five millions. But in the field of 
higher education, the state has stood still. Sometime ago one of 
our teachers, after making a fairly thorough investigation, found 
over six hundred Arkansas young people attending colleges outside 
of the state. Our leading cities send a much larger percent of 
their young people to colleges outside of the state than to colleges 
within the state. Why? Because in mosi cases they find that 
other states have adequately supplied their colleges and univer- 
sities Wxth equipment and men. 

The University— Her Record 

Take our own state university. The institution has done some 
excellent work and has rendered the state invaluable service in 
spite of its poverty. On the institution the state has expended a 
total of $1,671,404 since its foundation in 1872. The plant is now 
worth about $1,000,000 leaving an expenditure of only $671,404 not 
represented by assets that could be sold by the auctioneer. What 
has the state received in return? A fair question. For over forty 
years the University has furnished the elementary and secondary 
schools hundreds and thousands of their best teachers. The Uni- 
versity for years has been training the engineers to bridge the 
state's streams, to build her railroads, to develop her water 
power, to tunnel her mountains, to mine her coal and to construct 
her sewers. From the University have come her ablest lawyers, 
judges and statesmen, her leaders in public life. The agricultural 
college has become a powerful force in solving the problems of the 
farm and in arousing an interest in scientific agriculture. How 
much more valuable are the farms and other property of the state 
by reason of the University? How many of our best citizens 
would have settled in other states if Arkansas had no University? 
Subtract from the state's in vestment the inflaence of the university 
upon her public schools, upon her professional and civic life, upon 
her engineering and agricultural interests and what is left? How 
would the abolition of the University affect property values, 
immigration, civic pride and education? 

But the business which the University has fostered has out- 
grown the machinery. The simple economic conditions which the 
university has been serving have passed away: they have been suc- 
ceeded by an extremely complex industrial and social order; and, 
as with the growth of the factory the old machinery has to give 
place to new improved machinery, so must the crude equipment 
and buildings of the old university give place with the growth of 
the state to a greater university adapted to the needs of the age. 

Arkansas and Missouri 

As a consequence of inadequate support, the University 
of Arkansas has for several years been standing still, possi- 
bly losing ground, while her sister universities have been forging 
to the front. Eighteen years ago, President Jesse went to 
the University of Missouri just at the same time that 

—8— 



President J. L. Buchanan came to the University of Arkansas. 
At that time the two institutions were practically equal; both had 
large preparatory departments and about 600 students each. To- 
day the University of Missouri ranks as one of the leading state 
universities ot the United States. We are ashamed to say where 
Arkansas stands. This contrast is in large measure_ due to the 
failure of the people of Arkansas to furnish the institution with 
money for development. We have had a bare existence and 
meager at that. 

Buildings 

Owing to the depleted condition of the state treasury, the 
legislature for the last eight years has cut out of the University 
bills all building items. This, too, at a time when the institution 
ought to have been expanding. Some five years ago the physics 
building was burned and has not been replaced. A fevN^ years ago 
the shops were burned and a temporary makeshift was erected be- 
tween sessions of the legislature, It has never been replaced with 
shops adequate to meet our needs. Moreover the state has erected 
cheap buildings on the campus. The cities of Fort Smith and 
Little Rock are putting more into their high school-buildings than 
the state has put into all the buildings on the University campus. 
While the University authorities do not hope now for all the build- 
ings needed, yet the state should adopt a building program extend- 
ing over a period of ten years, during which time scarcely a year 
should be allowed to pass that does not witness the erection of a 
substantial building on the campus. 

Five Colleges 

The University is made up of five colleges— Arts and Science, 
Agriculture, Engineering, Education, Medicine and the Branch 
Normal. It is therefore attempting to cover almost the whole do- 
main of human knowledge; and the demands that are made upon 
it are enormous. It must furnish ripe scholars to give the ad- 
vanced as well as elementary instruction in all branches of human 
learning. 

Research 

Moreover, in addition to teaching, the University is required 
to ..do two other distinct and expensive lines of work, research and 
university extension. The University is the state's only agency 
for the doing of research work — that is, to extend the domain of 
human knowledge. This is expected in all fields,— language, the 
social sciences, engineering, agriculture, medicine, and the pure 
sciences. Such work requires specialists of a high order, costly 
laboratories and extensive libraries. It is probably the most im- 
portant service of the University to the state. It vitalizes all 
teaching and touches a thousand interests where teaching touches 
one. Science, the product of research, has doubled the span of 



life and multiplied the productive power of man. Yet vital to the 
life of the state as research is, Arkansas has practically provided 
no means for it at the University. 

Laboratories 

To carry on successfully the teaching and research work in 
such vast fields as the modern university is called upon to coyer, 
requires an immense outlay in library and laboratory equipments; 
but with us these equipments have been deteriorating for years, 
simply for lack of replacement and repair. They are in poorer 
condition than they have been for years. Not only have the li- 
brary and laboratories not grown v/ith the needs of the University 
but apparatus and books have not been replaced as they have been 
damaged or worn out. Within the last four years equipment items 
amounting to $158,250 have been vetoed. This has shut off our 
laboratory supplies and explains the run down condition of equip- 
ments. In our Department of Electrical Engineering we are using 
for instruction a machine m.ade in 1880. In up-to-date universities 
all such machinery has long been on the scrap heap. 

Hortieulture 

This society is interested in the horticultural department. 
The University of Illinois expends on this department $100,000 a 
year for maintenance and has thirty-two instructors and investi- 
gators. What does the same department at the University of 
Arkansas receive? For the last four years the small state appro- 
priations for horticulture (about $900 a year) have been vetoed. 
So the departm.ent has been entirely without funds. Moreover, it 
has had only one man to do all the teaching and extension work, 
to carry on the experiments, and to conduct the large correspon- 
dence of the department. If you will place on one side of the 
sheetthe vast horticultural interests of the great state of Arkansas 
with its possibilities and needs, and on the other side Professor 
Walker, helpless to do his work for lack of money, you will have a 
true pieture of Jioic the state is dealing with the fruit industry of one of 
the greatest fruit sections of the Union. And this picture of what the 
state is doing for the fruit interest is typical of what it is doing for other 
great interests. And what is more to the point, the legislature is 
doing for horticalture just what the people engaged in the 
fruit industry demand— nothing. The legislature is doing for the 
departments of agronomy and animal husbandry just what the 
people demand— practically nothing. Have the members of the 
Horticultural Society ever gone to our legislature and shown them 
the vital relation of a strong University to the development of the 
fruit interest of the state? Have the stock breeders and the farm- 
ers ever told their representatives that they want the University 
liberally supported that it may help them in the solution of their 
problems? The legislators want to represent the people. The 
University is just as efficient as the people will permit it to be. 

-10- 



The people are getting just what they are paying for. We get out 
of a thing about what we put into it. 

University Extension 

Moreover, the University is now powerless to offer graduate 
work. Young men and women must leave the state to get it. Neither 
can the University discharge its duty to the State in the way of 
University extension work. The benefits of the University should 
be carried to the remotest corners of the state. The humblest cit- 
izen should receive its inspiration and uplift. The University 
should be carried to those of the people who can not come to it. 
The University must draw nearer to the people, young and old, in 
helpfulness and service. This is an old philosophy, but informed 
now by a new and vigorous spirit. University extension is the 
name given to this great connecting link between every part of a 
university and the actual conditions of life in the state which the 
university exists to aid and strengthen. The fundamental ideal of 
university extension is the ideal of service to democracy as a 
whole. The University should vitalize the whole intellectual Hfe 
and should serve every material interest of the state. But to 
carry out such a program will require a much larger teaching 
force. 

Moreover, poverty is no motive for denying educational ad- 
vantages to our young people. If New England had waited until 
she was rich to develope her educational institutions, she would 
never have become the power in American life that she has. Lack 
of proper support of the University now means the sapping of 
the intellectual life of the next generation. 

Arkansas and Her Neighbors 

Our state is falling far behind her sister states in the field of 
higher education. The whole state was thrilled with pride when 
the United States Commissioner of Education, P. P. Claxton, told 
the 1500 teachers at Little Rock three weeks ago how the whole 
Nation was looking on with wonder at the rapid strides which 
Arkansas is making in the field of elementary education; when 
Hon. 0. H. Benson of the Department of Agriculture (U. S.) 
congratulated the state on her splendid agricultural schools; 
when we were reminded that Missouri and other states were quot- 
ing Arkansas' law on state aid to high schools; and that our plan 
of putting normal training into high schools would be copied all over 
the United States. But when we come to the University the table 
is turned. The poor state of South Carolina, the assessed value of 
whose property is $150,000,000 less than that of our state, ex- 
pended in 1911 on institutions doing the work covered by our 
University $392,672, while Arkansas appropriated $145,195; 
Missouri for the same year appropriated for her University 
$670,861; Kansas, $945,670; Mississippi with less property, $296,- 
720; the little state of North Dakota with a little over half the 

-11- 




029 915 271 6 



wealth of Arkansas $850,375; Minnesota $1,479,662; our sister state 
of Oklahoma, $489,123; and Iowa, $1016,172. That is to say. South 
Carolina with less than two-thirds the wealth appropriated over 
two and a half times as much as did Arkansas for higher educa- 
tion: Mississippi with less property, over twice as much; North 
Dakota with less than two-thirds the wealth, almost two and a 
half times as much; and Oklahoma with about the same wealth, 
three and a half times as much as Arkansas. 

What is the meaning of all these facts? They show con- 
clusively that the University is the one neglected educational 
institution of the state and that Arkansas has never taken a large 
view of her university. This is state suicide, a case of stoppage at 
the source— intellectual, moral and material stagnation. Arkansas 
for the last six years has been spending on her University about 
8 cents per capita or 40 cents for an average family of five. Forty 
cents happens to be the present price of a dozen eggs. Is it- not 
possible to raid another hen's nest in the interest of higher educa- 
tion? At present prices one egg per capita v/ould add $50,000 to 
the University or would put up a substantial building. Can't the 
the state be induced to pay back to the University the $158,250 
vetoed in the last four years? It means three eggs per capita. 

Arkansas the Rich Man 

We are now prepared to roturn to the introduction. We have 
found the man whom VN^e started out to look for, namely, the rich 
man otherwise well dressed wearing a Dattered hat. Arkansas is 
the man and the University is the hat. Moreover, Arkansas is the 
man in comfortable circumstances who depended upon his neigh- 
bors to educate his children. 

Now what are we going to do about it? Are we going to con- 
tinue to wear the battered hat? Or, are we going to get a hat in 
keeping with the rest of our clothes? Are we going to continue to 
let our neighbors educate our children? No! A swelHng note is 
coming from all over the state for a greater university. Both 
political parties have called for liberal support, both the retiring 
and the incoming governors recommend it, and many organiza- 
tions, such as commercial leagues and agricultural societies have 
taken similar action. The state should catch a vision of a greater 
University, and then with energy' convert the vision into reality. 
Such a work is worthy of the best thought and efforts of our 
strongest men; and I know of no work which will be productive of 
more far-reaching results than efi'orts to make our University the 
very key-stone of all that is best and finest in Arkansas. Let or- 
ganizations like yours do their duty. 



-12- 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



029 915 271 6 



Hollinger Corp. 
pH8.5 



